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How exercise shaped the human brain

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New research has led to a hypothesis that an increase in aerobic activity resulting from the adoption of a hunter-gatherer lifestyle directly influenced the evolution of the human brain.

David Raichlen is one of the scientists studying the connection between physical activity and the brain. The New York Times looked at his research last month:

Of course, the hypothesis that jogging after prey helped to drive human brain evolution is just a hypothesis, Dr. Raichlen says, and almost unprovable.

But it is compelling, says Harvard's Dr. Lieberman, who has worked with the authors of the new article. "I fundamentally agree that there is a deep evolutionary basis for the relationship between a healthy body and a healthy mind," he says, a relationship that makes the term "jogging your memory" more literal than most of us might have expected and provides a powerful incentive to be active in 2013.